Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on Ozempic side effect warnings

Australia’s drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), has added two new safety warnings about mental health and contraception for people taking weightloss drugs.

The TGA said that suicidal behaviour and ideation have been reported with these relatively new GLP-1 receptor agonists and, despite no proven causal association, they feel awareness and caution is needed. 

Australian correspondent Murray Olds told Heather du Plessis-Allan, "There's still not a lot of information available. (Ozempic) hasn't been around long enough."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murray Old's Ozzie correspondents.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
So that's hello, mus Yeah, good afternoon.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
He so, how does farmer die with bushfire?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
He got overwhelmed by the fire. Must have been a
wind change. Police are looking at this, but there's no
suggestion that this has been suspicious in any way. They've
been I mean, look has been scoring scorching temperatures in
Western Australia. This guy is a Chapaner's sixty the local farmer,
we understand, and this happened late yesterday. He was at Rapner,

(00:30):
not far from Ravensthorpe for those who know Wa. Anyway,
there was a big bush fire that was threatening a
number of homes in the vicinity there and this fellow,
apparently in his sixties, he went out on a front
end loader to try and set up a firebreak and
the vehicle, as I say, was engulfed in flames and
he died at the scene. There have been sadly and bloody,

(00:53):
annoyingly and dreadfully a number of suspected arson fires that
have been caused by people just deliberately lighting them so
they get short shripped when locals get them. I can
assure you, what.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you make of the reduction and power of with
the e bikes in New South Wales.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, the government is convinced it's going to actually have
a bit of an impact. A New South Wales is
the odd one out over here. Apparently it's the only
state and territory where you're allowed to have five hundred
watts of power in an e bike. These things apparently
capable of doing up to sixty ks an hour, and
you see kids running around with no helmet, wearing bikinis

(01:34):
and no shoes and they're blasting along the roads and streets.
You just think you're just crazy. So by harving a
number of watts down to two hundred and fifty, that
will halve the speed limit. Now I saw a figure
this morning. I just I had to sit down and
think about it. Six hundred and sixty thousand of these
things on the streets of New South Wales. They're apparently
very easily modified to go faster, but they can be deadly.

(01:57):
Five speed related deaths this year, most recently only a
couple of weeks back, a sixty five year old man
out for a walk in west and Saidney he got
cleaned up in one of these things and he died.
At the scene, and not only that, Fire and Rescue
tell us there are hundreds of fires so far this year,
thermal fires, with these runaway fires, batteries being charged, altered
batteries being charged on cheap, on cheap, imported charges, or

(02:23):
batteries that have been modified that are also being charged,
and these things, as I say, deadly. There's been a
number of deaths here, including a couple of I think
they were from Argentina. A couple of backpackers had a
charging in their in their room and they couldn't get
out and so they died of the fire. So look,
anything they can do to make it safe for the
new Southviower's premier says, the better we know the whole

(02:44):
lot better we're going to be off listen.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I was interested in what this Australian, the regulator in
your part of the world, had to say about ozempic.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Is there.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, I couldn't quite see were they actually saying
that there is a relationship between taking ozempic and then
having suicidal tendencies very very.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Early, And that's the point that was made this morning.
We spoke to a researcher professor at the University of Sydney. So,
as you say, Australia's medicines regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration,
has put out the safety warning, the potential risk they
say people taking a zempic of suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

(03:20):
On the same day Heather, the World Health Organizations come
out and said, listen to Zempic's great. It's not a
magic solution to help people lose weight, but I'll tell
you what, it's pretty body good at doing it, and
so you know, no worries, but doctors should take care
of prescribing it. Here's the thing. Professor Barbarat Mintz says
a zempic is more effective than any other obesity drug,

(03:40):
but there's still not a lot of information available. It
hasn't been around long enough. So the extent to which
people are reporting suicidal thoughts we just don't know at
this moment. But I suppose if it's considered significant enough
for the Therapeutic Goods Administration to put out this warning,
I guess someone's pretty worried about it.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, Moz, thanks very much, really appreciate it. Murray Old's
Australia correspondent. For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
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